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SXSWi 2013: A Great Show About Nothing

Jerry Seinfeld would have loved SXSWi 2013: It’s a show about nothing. This is not to say it’s without substance. Like Seinfeld’s classic show, which wove together three or more threads that usually intersected in hilarious ways, SXSWi weaves together thousands of threads that are all interesting, but not necessarily thematically cohesive.

While most regard SXSWi as the coolest of all trade shows, it’s not as different as people think. I noticed, for instance, that there was a distinct lack of buzz about any one specific thing. There were a handful of products and companies people were talking about, but I could not readily identify this year’s Highlight or a trend like “near me” apps.

Prior to the show, SXSW told us what the trends would be: 3D printing, DIY, Big Data, Space Exploration, Internet of Things and Wearable Tech. I think they were mostly right. NASA had a huge presence, though it was on the other side of the river, and 3D printing and DIY owned a keynote and a special tent outside. Beyond that, though, I found less evidence of Internet of things and wearable tech (aside from Google Glass). In order for any of these things to truly be show trends, they needed to permeate SXSW, be somewhat inescapable. I just didn’t see that.

Many people I ran into asked me this same question: What’s the hot product or topic at this year’s show? This was not so much a gut check as reflective of the fact they simply did not know.

My answer was usually circuitous: It was about many things. Yes, I’d seen some good, even great stuff, but products like Leap Motion got inordinate attention because there was so little other hardware around to compete.

SXSW did in some ways deliver on its promised themes. As I said, 3D printing was well represented in the Creator Tent and Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis made quite a splash when he introduced the Makerbot Digitizer Desktop 3D scanner. Yet, for as excited as Pettis was about his own product, it did not generate the same kind of buzz as, say, Grumpy Cat.

3D digitization is, as Pettis noted on stage, not a new concept, but bringing it to consumers is a big deal. Unfortunately, I’m not sure anyone got this and with jewelry, busts, dresses, instruments, records and even guns being printed, people may be growing a bit blasé about the technology.

Speaking of Grumpy Cat, that feline was a bona fide star at the show. Attendees lined up around the block for a picture with the chilled-out cat at the Mashable Tent. I was honestly blown away by the response. We also had an astronaut, a congressman and other notables pass through Mashable House. I keep wondering if people would also line up for a picture with any of them.

Testing Ground

If there was an overriding SXSWi theme, it might have been marketing wars. I love watching companies roll out innovative and bizarre digital and real-world marketing schemes at the show. It's part one-upmanship and part proving ground for ideas that might work outside the SXSW bubble.

On the whole, though, companies were somewhat less aggressive about on-the-street campaigns. Sure, I saw a car in fur from TaskRabbit, the return of Hootsuite’s owl truck and other rolling promos, but the swag levels were way down. No one was throwing T-shirts from their cars and buses. This is probably a good thing, since I’m unconvinced that giving away a T-shirt gets you anything more than the immediate, “Thanks, bro.”

SXSW also banished most food trucks to a few corrals, which may have been to encourage more people to eat in the local restaurants — of which there are many — but also cut down a bit on the serendipitous meet and greets we enjoyed at those trucks.

Big companies like Esurance, AT&T, Ford, Chevy and Oreo, however, dominated the marketing conversation with big booths and concepts in the hallways and on the streets. There were fewer smaller companies risking bigger bucks on social marketing schemes, and certainly fewer of them launching real conversation-starter campaigns.

Come Together

This year, the film portion of SXSW partially overlapped with Interactive. As a result, there were more movie premieres and celebrities roaming the halls and chatting with more digitally-focused outlets. The change makes perfect sense as film is now a digital medium and most studios rely heavily on social media marketing to generate buzz for their latest projects. Still, like everything else, there was just one big film: Burt Wonderstone (and maybe Spring Breakers) and then lots and lots of smaller documentary and film projects.

It’s About the People

Like last year, some of my best SXSW meetings happened by accident and certainly most were in the hallways of the convention center and the streets of Austin.

There was my total nerd-out with Bitcasa’s CEO. Tony Gauda lives and breathes cloud storage and loves to talk tech almost as much as I do. We both came to the agreement that the future of storage is not on local hard drives.

My late-night stroll through Austin with uTest CMO Matt Johnson was a highlight. He told me all about Applause, uTest’s Mobile App Analytics. It sounds like a cool way to find out if your app is winning with customers.

Also memorable was my impromptu interview at the Mashable Party with Really Reel Co-founder Nick Anderson, who’s launched a web-based reality TV channel where anyone can start their own reality TV show. He told me it’s the site for people who say to themselves, “Our lives should be a reality TV show!” I fear there may be too many of those people in the world.

I also met Software Engineer Nick Shelton in the Creator Tent. He used the Lynx Laboratories 3D Camera to turn me into this 3D model.

Many whom I spoke to at the event insisted that the most important part of SXSW is the parties. I attended some of them, but once the music started blasting and people began gyrating and sweating on the dance floor, all regular human interaction was swept aside. I watched in fascination as people tried gamely to conduct normal conversation in the middle of it all. They were all doing “The Party Talk Tango,” where one person puts their face to another’s ear to say something and then they switch positions to await the response. I did this too for a bit, but then found I was still yelling and at real risk of losing my voice.

There are, by the way, a lot of parties, all competing for your attention. They lured attendees with free food (though almost never enough), DJs and, sometimes, impressive headline acts. SXSW vets know how to party hop and see it all. I’m convinced they’re vampires, since none of them seemed to need sleep.

Turning Point

I enjoyed SXSW. I learned a lot, saw interesting things and met interesting people. Even so, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the show had turned a corner. It’s getting too corporate, too commercial, and less random. I reminded one attendee that no trade show is permanent (see PCExpo and COMDEX) and there’s always something fresher waiting in the wings. I joked that there would soon be an upstart show, with more gritty startups, lots of loopy, unpolished ideas and smaller, edgier movies. It’ll be called, naturally, “North by Northwest.”

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